Not too many startups these days make large quantities of tangible objects. MCube decided not to say much until it had produced 60 million things.

To be specific, mCube says it has shipped more than 60 million extremely small semiconductor chips–comparable to a grain of sand, not the fingernail-sized variety that the likes of Intel and its competitors sell.

MCube, which is based in San Jose, Calif., is one of very few semiconductor companies to receive venture funding in recent years. It is announcing a $37 million infusion on Wednesday.

The company makes motion-sensor chips, also known as accelerometers, which are used in just about every smartphone these days. The devices help detect speed and movement by the physical motion of tiny components on the chips, a category of product known by the acronym MEMS, for micro-electro-mechanical systems

A special attraction, says CEO Ben Lee, is a proprietary design that allows mCube to undercut the production cost of other makers of accelerometer chips. At the same time, a large market is emerging beyond the smartphones and tablets that have used most mCube chips today–in smartwatches, activity monitors and other devices that people use on the go.

“We call it the Internet of moving things,” Lee says.

MCube was founded in 2009 and has been shipping products since 2012, with the aid of original investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and early partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which invested in mCube and produces chips it designs.

The startup’s chips cost in the range of 30 cents to 70 cents each, Lee says, partly because of its unusual production process and the fact that it can use old TSMC manufacturing lines–not the advanced sort needed for the latest digital chips. (Many Intel chips, by contrast, cost hundreds of dollars each).

One implication of such tiny sensors, Lee says, is that devices like activity trackers in the future won’t cost $99 or more but more like $19, a price low enough to turn them an impulse-buy product that people will replace frequently.

And future wearables won’t just have one accelerometer, he says. Rather, they will exploit multiple accelerometers, to allow much more precise measurement of motions to track exercise, sleeping or other activity.

“Ideally you want to have multiple sensors embedded in your pajamas, or your shirt or whatever you wear to bed,” Lee says.

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